Cursed by Life Revised
by Snow Tigra
Summary: When a person is born in death, they are cursed by death, for life. Gaara had always seen the spirits around him and they'd never bothered him before. But that was before he met Haku and things took a turn in his horrible life for the worst. AU
1. Teaser

Ok, here's the deal. My muses have decided the plot is going to take a major side line and certain characters aren't going to make an appearance in this story as I thought they were. So I'm reposting the story with the changes. Everything has been edited. In some cases there may only be spelling corrections, in others I may have changed plot points. Sorry about all the confusion this may cause, but the story really wasn't working how I had it originally.

Title: Cursed by Life (Revised)  
Series: Naruto Author: Snow Tigra Warnings: AU, dark, possibly violent and general creepiness. Not for the faint, though I'm not talking about major sexual stuff. I'm talking about ghosts, spirits and demonic worlds. My muses are aiming out to make this extra creepy. This is your warning.

"Legends say that when a person is born in death, they are cursed by death for life."

Prologue

The sound of a belt cracking through the room woke him up, shooting him up in bed, a layer of sweat covering his face. His leg still ached where the belt had hit him earlier that day, and his mind seemed set on making sure sleep was impossible by reminding him exactly how it felt each and every time he managed any type of sleep. He winced painfully and slowly laid back in bed, feeling the marks on his leg cry out in pain now that he was awake.

These days even his own body seemed content to torture him at every opening.

He waited until the pain dulled itself into a constant throbbing, as if reminding him exactly how hard it would be to walk tomorrow, before he rolled over on his other side to face the wall. It was early in the morning and he still had hours before he would have to wake up and he wasn't about to waste them, no matter how much his body's sadistic sense of humor protested. Pulling the old quilt closer around his shoulders, he buried his head in the pillows, trying to ignore the other presence in the room.

It would never leave.

He rolled over at night for a reason. A long time ago he'd been afraid to turn his back to it, afraid that at any moment a hand would come reaching out to grasp him and take him away like all the stories said. It wasn't until recently that he'd stopped being so scared. In spite of how he felt, it never left.

Gaara laid there for a long moment staring at the wall, just watching it with open eyes. Sleep was long past and he could hear the strange echoing sound that always filled his ears when it was around. Slowly he rolled over in bed to face it.

It resembled a woman, if such a word as resembled could even be used. Rather, she was in the corner of his room, almost standing there as if it were perfectly normal for her to be there. A long white dress covered her body, stained from pink to red to black from the waist down. The bottom of the dress was black and torn, not meeting the floor but not revealing legs either, just empty air that was a little too thick to really be called air.

Her skin wasn't translucent or even really pale like one would expect. Instead it just held an absence of color, standing out in stark contrast to her sheeringly white and red dress. Long hair that had once been a strawberry blond was now matted and tangled, stretching down to cover her eyes and flow past her shoulders to a tangled clump at the back of her waist. While the lower half of her face was twist in a macabre smile, tilted up to a point that sane people could never reach. Always smiling. Always.

Gaara watched her without expression, just watching the thing which appeared in the darkness of his room. She looked young and yet the hands that reached out toward him were gnarled and twisted out of shape, flashing in images between clenched fists to broken fingers that bent each way. She reached toward him and moved toward the bed, stopping only when she was close enough for her hand to float near his face.

Years ago this had frightened him into screaming nearly every night.

Tonight Gaara reached out his own hand, slowly touching the gnarled hands that floated before him. A flash and they were gone, as if they'd never been there, and were now hanging lifeless at the woman's side. Meanwhile she tilted her head, the gruesome smile on her face seeming to tilt even a bit more.

Gaara watched her a moment longer then his own eyes drifted shut, just letting her stand there undisturbed by the edge of his bed as he drifted off to sleep.

"Good night mom." 


	2. Chapter 1

Chapter 1 

The academy was a sad and sorry sight. Even in the brightly annoying light of the sun it stuck out of the ground like a rejection of concrete, jutting out for all to see. This place was avoided like the plague when one could help it, and apparently nature had decided to follow that rule as well, with trees that surrounded the building but all seemed to grow at a slant and a twist, as if trying to run away from their own roots. The grass spoke of care and fresh seed, even a hefty watering that had been put on in preparation for the first day. In a month it would be brown and dead, begging for replanting or burning from feet that trampled with no care for a sidewalk and a budget that was only big enough to really care once a year. There was even an occasional flower that was planted at the front of the building. Those never even lasted a single passing time.

Gaara wondered why they even tried.

The mass of students emptied the school, filling said lawn and already starting the ritual killing of the grass. Feet trampled, voices yelled and laughed and the occasional book and backpack being dropped and forgotten until class was called back into session. There was no regard for the trees they leaned against, nor the flowers they walked over. It had all been for show anyway, no one cared as soon as the parents were gone from the first day's orientation. Now the yard was just full of students. A normal group of students varying in age, height, appearance and scars. Especially here, the scars were plentiful.

These weren't the scars like the ones on Gaara's leg, which he was now covering with a loose pair of pitch black jeans, but rather the scars of life that were more visible in the eyes then anywhere else. This wasn't your normal school, but a school for the children who protruded from normality much like the school did from the ground. This school held the rejects who wouldn't be welcome at the fancy and expensive academy next door. Not even money and cleanly pressed clothes could hide something as important to the world as one's mental record.

Gaara, for himself, was the only one in the school who seemed to dress the part. Long ago he'd taken up the habit of wearing black, and the occasionally dark color that could easily be mistaken for black or something darker. His wardrobe consisted of dead clothing, but the type that was killed on purpose in the name of a 'gothic' sense of fashion as they now were in favor of calling it. A pair of black jeans and a loose button down black shirt that resembled silk easily changed their view when placed alongside fishnet and a handful of belts, on a body of pale skin and strikingly red hair. Even those who never considered themselves normal stayed away from Gaara. His wardrobe accomplished exactly what he'd intended it to in the first place. It kept people away.

Lunch hour was the hardest time to keep people away, because that was when even the shyest person in school seemed to grow a small excuse for a backbone, anything to make an attempt at being friends with those closest by. The mind was a scary thing when it felt the need for companionship and Gaara made quite sure he wasn't anywhere near anyone else when such urges always seemed to arise. You got in trouble for being antisocial here thanks to the teachers and doctors who watched the students like hawks. It was easier to slip away unnoticed to solitude and return silently when needed.

With that thought in mind, the line of bushes at the far side of the schoolyard quickly became a doorway to that solitude and quiet. He made his way nonchalantly to the line of foliage and easily slipped between the branches, knowing from years of practice how to keep the small branches from catching the fishnet which rested against his chest. A handful of steps and he was free, the sounds of the yard muffled by the leaves, leaving him to do as he pleased.

Gaara picked his way down a small path, wandering aimlessly with his hands in his pockets to the large chain link fence that separated both of the campuses. In complete disregard for the other school he turned his back to it and leaned against the fence, closing his eyes and enjoying the rare moment of quiet which he only seemed to find at school.

Footsteps moved off in the distance, light and soft, moving toward him. Gaara's mind dismissed them and he didn't stir, knowing they were too soft to belong to anything human. They were also coming from the wrong direction to be from the school. He wasn't the only one who knew about this retreat, but he was the only one who made use of it on a regular basis. The other students and teachers knew he liked this area, but also that he liked to be alone. Unspoken rules from the teachers on not bothering certain students occasionally made their ways to the students, and Gaara was one of the lucky ones. His style of dress wasn't the only thing about him that kept others away.

"Oh."

A frown crossed Gaara's face and he opened his eyes, correcting himself. There was someone else here.

Said someone was a boy, about the same age as Gaara, but easily a world apart. Unlike Gaara he actually wore a school uniform of light blue with an intricate flower insignia embroidered over the left pocket. Perfectly ironed pants and even polished black shoes added to the ensemble while only his long black hair seemed to throw it off. Boys from that school weren't allowed to wear their hair down if it was long, not to mention that it made this boy in particular look like a girl.

"Sorry, I hope I'm not disturbing you."

Gaara gave a soft snort. "Wrong side of the fence kid. Your school's over there, and I'm already disturbed. You should know that."

"Oh. I know." His cheeks flushed with a bit of red, the sure sign of shyness, no matter how normal a person was. Gaara watched as the boy fidgeted a bit and his eyes wandered, as if they couldn't decide if it was safe for them to stay fixed on Gaara, no matter how much Gaara knew the boy wanted to stare. "I know… that my school's on that side. But I wanted to see it from this side, just for a change."

"Still the same school." Gaara countered with a shrug of disinterest. Normally he wouldn't have talked to such a kid, but today it seemed worth the effort. If he could make him not as interested there was more of a chance that he would be left alone in the future. Of course he could scare the kid away, but that usually took too much effort and could easily backfire. Disinterest seemed to be the best route available.

"Same school yes, but different view. And the view is the interesting part."

Gaara just shrugged and crossed his arms, his eyes looking back toward his own school. He could see the top edge of the clock and that the arm hadn't come into sight yet. It wasn't even near the end of lunch.

"Want some?"

Gaara blinked and looked down to see the boy had taken a seat leaning up against the fence, much to Gaara's distaste, and was now eating his small excuse of a lunch which came from a brown paper bag. At the moment he was holding out half of his sandwich toward Gaara.

"Not hungry."

"Oh."

Silence returned to them, broken only by the quiet sound of the boy's paper bag whenever he grabbed another part of his lunch. The fact that he wasn't leaving soon became very apparent to Gaara and he only found himself frowning more. People like this boy were the reason he isolated himself at lunch. There were always people who tried to attach to you and be social no matter how clear you made it that you weren't interested. For people like this, scaring and disinterest didn't work and often neither did leaving. They always attached themselves like leeches until the victim finally got so fed up he was forced to either detach his own limb or squash the annoyance.

"Do you have a name?"

"Everyone does." He responded, now avoiding looking at the boy completely.

"Mine's Haku."

Gaara shivered, hearing those words and for a moment the world around him seemed to pause. He blinked and looked up, surprised to find the same apparition from the night before, nestled in the shadows of a willow tree whose branches moved back and forth, almost hiding her from view. Darkness surrounded her like a shroud as she faced them, her eyes hidden from sight and yet her stance leaving no doubt that she was watching them.

That was strange. She didn't usually leave his room.

Gaara glanced down at the boy beside him and was surprised for a moment to see him sitting there, his uniform torn and blood soaking the light blue, turning the color wet and brown. The grass surrounding him was wet, dripping in the liquid as it stained the ground. Two of his limbs were bent in odd angles, showing exactly how many times they'd been broken and snapped.

And before he could react, the vision was gone, melting back into the poor excuse for reality which made of the world of others. One moment he was surrounded by cold and hollow silence, and the next it faded with a sigh of breath originating from the willow tree. Gaara took an involuntary step back, causing the boy next to him to move and break the vision, returning to his appearance from a moment before.

"Are you… all right?"

"Fine," Gaara bit out. Pushing off the fence he quickened his pace and didn't look back. Images like this didn't bother him as much anymore, but that didn't mean that he liked seeing them. He avoided turning his face back and quickly moved back to the school, all but running as he ducked between the bushes and retreated back into an empty classroom, seriously considering finding a new silent place to claim as his own.

(The next day)

His feet carried him, on instinct and years of voluntarily built habit, back to the same spot. Ducking through the bushes and following the path, he made his way down to the fence the next day. He'd thought about it for a long time last night and had finally come to the conclusion that there simply were no other places to seek solitude on the campus that could be found. This was the last one that was accessible to him, and he wasn't going to let one solitary boy force him into being social with the rest of his school during lunchtime. And it certainly wasn't as if the fence was only along a small area. He could easily sit far away from the boy and find his own peace and quiet.

Today, as the fence came into view, he turned his steps to the willow tree. There were more clouds in the sky today and the sun wasn't readily visible, making the world just that much darker around him. It wasn't much, but it was enough to make the space under the willow tree seem a misplaced patch of night. Parting the long hanging branches Gaara peered into the darkness.

The old and gnarled trunk of the tree stretched out under the canopy, hidden from sight and standing like a large bouncer to protect whatever misty or half visible figures decided to take refuge in his shade. Gaara couldn't make any out with any clarity, but willow trees always had thicker air then the rest of the world, hinting toward the possibility of other things solid. He'd rationalized it to the dead tending to gather around a tree that was forever weeping.

A soft breeze blew behind him, rustling the leaves at his feet and the air seemed to shift. Gaara stood still as a hollow static filled his ears and the empty space in front of him began to take form. He blinked once and she was standing there, her head tilted at an unnatural angle as she smiled gruesomely at him, this time both of her hands raising as if to pull him into a hug.

Gaara stepped back from the tree and let the branches fall between them, turning away from her. He stopped and took in a soft surprised breath when he saw that the boy from yesterday was standing a few feet away.

Had she appeared when Haku did?

"Good afternoon." The boy smiled in greeting, looking the same as the day before, save that today his hair was halfheartedly pulled back into a braid. It may have been perfect this morning, but his hair was obviously so smooth and straight that it could easily slip out of braids and hair ties. The back braid was falling apart, but in a way that it almost looked intended. He still looked like a girl.

"You ran away yesterday, I didn't know if you'd come back. Was something wrong?" The boy actually looked concerned. Gaara wondered if he would have wandered up to the school to find out about him if he hadn't showed up. Haku seemed like one of those types.

"Fine." Gaara shoved his hands in his pocket and took another glance out of the side of his eye toward the willow tree, before walking back over toward the fence. He couldn't decide if it was strange that she was staying under the tree, or if it was just odd that she seemed to be watching both him and Haku. It was the first time he'd ever seen her turn her attention to something else besides him. She didn't even seem to acknowledge his father when he entered the room occasionally at night. So why was now different? Was there something about this boy?

Haku followed Gaara back to the fence and stood there for a moment, as if deciding, before he sat down, leaning against the chain link. Once again he opened his lunch and just silently ate it, sitting next to Gaara. Gaara, meanwhile, laid back on the ground, his eyes closed as he pondered the fact that she was still under the tree, watching.

"So what did you do?"

Gaara ignored the question, feigning that he'd dozed off. He didn't feel like participating in a conversation at the moment, especially not with a random stranger who was nothing like him at all. Conversations with random strangers never really wandered beyond the weather and sports and stupid subjects like that. Anything beyond the dreaded small talk and it was too much information. You never gave out that information until you knew what kind of person you were talking to, and Gaara preferred to not give out that kind of information at all.

Silence grew between them, occasionally broken by the boy eating his lunch. After a moment he closed the bag and set it down. "I'm sorry, it's not really my business I guess. I was just curious."

"You don't really want to know." Gaara responded, shifting a bit. "No one who asks that question really wants to know."

"I'm just curious, that's all."

Gaara opened his eyes and glanced at the boy, half expecting for a second to see the same image he'd seen yesterday, with the blood and the dead body laying shattered beside him. But instead he just found Haku watching him nervously, the curiosity obvious in his eyes. Gaara frowned slightly and resorted to earlier tactics.

"I killed someone."

This time the silence was thick, palatable. Gaara could feel the stress that rose in the air, along with the fear. That's how everyone reacted. If you were going to reveal your past, or even a part of it, to a total stranger, why not start out with the most interesting part? That's how he'd always answered before and as long as the person he was speaking to wasn't a cop then the reaction was usually pretty gratifying. After a response like that, people left him alone.

"You… killed someone." Haku's voice shook a little, but otherwise seemed pretty steady. Gaara had to give him credit for that. Most would have left, most wouldn't have touched the subject again. In fact, most would have pulled the same excuse he had yesterday after seeing that image. He was almost tempted to mockingly hold his breath, to see how long it would take Haku to do the same.

"What happened?"

Gaara blinked and looked at the boy. "What?"

Haku tilted his head a bit curiously, eerily reminding Gaara of the way she always did. "What happened? Why did you… kill someone?"

Why don't you look scared? Gaara's mind quietly asked. He'd meant to say the words out loud, but they just wouldn't come. For the moment all he could do was watch Haku quietly, wondering as his mind was caught up in the tilt of his head. His eyes flickered back to the willow tree and he barely suppressed a shudder to see her tilting her head in the same fashion. The two resembled each other too much, it was uncanny and unnerving. It was as if she was trying to persuade him to tell, or asking why exactly he thought it was all his fault.

Gaara quickly looked away from both of them, leaning back against the fence to try and hide his sudden lack of comfort in the situation. "I killed my mother, during birth." His eyes slid to the tree and he watched her straighten a bit, her head returning to its normal angle--as if anything about her could really be called that--then she stepped back, becoming merely a shade under the tree. She was still watching, she always was, but she'd gotten her answer it seemed. So she stepped back to leave them alone.

Gaara wondered when he started attributing such a personality to the thing which haunted his bedroom.

"That's not your fault. They wouldn't have sent you to a… well, mental institution just because your mother died in childbirth. It can't have been that."

Gaara resisted the urge to laugh. The boy next to him struck him as comical in his innocence. Of course it wasn't the fact that he'd killed his mother in childbirth, but most wouldn't have ventured off past that statement because it was taboo territory. Death itself wasn't something you talked about, that's what landed you in mental institutions and convents and possibly even in the hospital. And yet here this boy was, asking with the curiosity of the little kids Gaara ran into when he wasted time at the mall. The kind of person who would ask what you ran into, when someone older knew it was obvious that your father had beaten you black and blue with a belt.

"I… I'm sorry. I'll stop pushing." The boy brought up his knees, hugging them lightly against his chest as he looked out over the small amount of plant life surrounding them. Apparently the situation was uncomfortable, but not uncomfortable for him to leave.

Did he crave the presence of another person that much, that he didn't care if the person was quiet, just that they were next to him?

Gaara sat up straighter, moving off the fence and leaned forward, picking a stick off the ground, lightly twirling it between his fingers for simple lack of nothing else to do. "No. It isn't enough. It is when you spend your life as a child insisting that she's standing in the corner of your room, staring at you."

The boy lifted his head in a jerky motion and turned to look at Gaara, an unreadable look on his face. A moment later the shock seemed to wear off and Gaara saw him blink a bit. "You… see ghosts?"

"I hate that word." Gaara tossed the branch and laid down on the ground, closing his eyes again. Mentally he was hitting himself, what in the world had possessed him to start up a conversation with this boy? What was the real point in it, and where would it lead? It was just a waste. Another venture into the realm of his life that people always asked about but never really wanted to know the answer to. There wasn't a nice way to say any of this and there really wasn't any point in saying it at all.

And yet.

And yet there was something else about this boy. It went beyond his eerie resemblance to her and even beyond the odd conflicting image of his older body and yet younger questions. The boy was a walking contradiction and perhaps, bore too much of a resemblance to the Gaara hidden under the black clothing and mis-cut hair then Gaara himself wanted to admit. One glance at the boy and a person would say that he and Gaara were nothing alike. And yet the longer the boy sat next to him, the more Gaara found himself peering at the boy, as if looking down into a lake at a blurred reflection.

"Then what do you call them?"

"I don't call her anything. She's just there. The others are just there. They come and go." Gaara shrugged.

To the children sitting around a campfire, the world of ghosts and demons was a wondrous and scary place to visit on a creepy summer's night where the wind was just chilly enough that you could blame it for the shivers from the story. To a solitary child who grew up seeing them lurking in the dark corners of every day life and occasionally reaching out to him, they moved beyond something scary and creepy, to become things of normal life. To Gaara the shades and apparitions he saw had melted back into the woodwork of life, becoming no more interesting then an old lady out walking her dog, or even the dying oak tree which had long sense given up the attempt to produce leaves.

She occupied more of his thoughts then normal, because he now knew of her connection. She still looked the way she had when she died, completely with the blood from her screaming child covering her night gown. The smile was a ghastly exaggeration on her face and perhaps the only thing that made her stand out from a normal person, making her instantly recognizable to him. Still, after seeing that smile nearly every night of his life, it had become no more creepy to him, then the curious look which had settled onto Haku's face now.

"What did you do?" Gaara countered after a moment, disturbing the silence. He didn't really care what Haku did or didn't do, but he needed to say something to derail his current train of thoughts. "How did you end up there?"

A tilting of the head down and Haku tugged at his uniform a bit. "Father's a lawyer, mother's a doctor." He hesitated, his voice growing a little softer. "They're attempting to make something out of nothing."

"So quit."

The boy looked up at him and blinked in question. "What?"

"You don't like school, so quit. Find something else."

Haku frowned. "Like you can leave where you are."

Both of them fell silent, his words echoing just slightly in the air between them. Gaara's train of thought once again reverted back to the track of how alike they were. And he closed his eyes to try and shake that thought. As he lay there silently he heard the bells ring from across the fence, signaling that lunch was ending for the more prestigious students in the area. The grass crunched beside him, giving way as Haku stood up and gathered up his lunch bag.

"You haven't told me your name."

Gaara opened his eyes sitting up to answer and froze in mid motion. He hadn't even noticed the air around him, but in the second it took him to open his mouth, the static sound roared into his ears and the sun passed behind a cloud, eerie twilight filling the area.

A repeat of the image from the day before flashed before his eyes with difference and more details, as if the artist had taken the time to flesh out the nightmare, bringing it more into reality then from the day behind.

Haku was knelt by the side of the fence, looking like a tossed rag doll, abandoned for new and better things. Hair covered his face, shading it from view, while his clothes were torn and stained, the thick red and brown ironically making the crest from his uniform stand out that much more. A stench filled the air, thick with blood, pain and other things Gaara had thankfully never experienced, nor did he ever want to. A stained knife glimmered a few feet from the body, only the handle unstained.

Gaara coughed out his name, barely able to understand his own word and that seemed enough to break the image, shattering it before his eyes. He coughed again and drew in a short breath as he saw the image break away to reveal Haku kneeling by the fence, completely normal and just watching him with a tinge of concern in his eyes.

"Gaara," he responded again when he was sure his voice wouldn't betray him.

Haku favored him with a smile and stood up, apparently not having noticed, or not bothered by Gaara's strange reaction to the question. Holding the crushed paper bag in his hand he waved at Gaara and started down the line of the fence, heading for whatever opening he used every day.

"Haku!" Gaara was standing up and calling after him, before he even realized what he was doing.

The boy stopped and looked back in question.

For a moment Gaara stood there, unsure what he'd intended to really say, though a second later it slipped out without hesitation.

"Be careful."

The boy nodded and rushed off, now more late then before. Gaara wondered if it even occurred to him why he'd said such a strange thing at the last moment. Aside from the images, he didn't even know the reason himself.

Seeing spirits and shades of the dead was one thing, something that Gaara had seen all his life. But premonitions, if that's what this was, was something he'd never experienced before, and honestly didn't have the foggiest idea about now. He was venturing into unknown territory with this boy and it seemed to be creating a progressing pattern.

But if that was true, how much more detailed could such a vision get?

Somewhere behind him, perhaps buried back in the willow tree, a thing seemed to stir. And she tilted her head once more, before fading from sight.


	3. Chapter 2

Chapter 2 Author's Note and Warning: Non-con in this chapter.

A stench filled the room, thick and hot, the smell of alcohol and nicotine, assaulting his nose. The light above him was hazy from the constant smoke wafting from the living room. He'd long since become accustomed to the smell, but that didn't mean he liked it.

The smoke was thick enough to clog one's brain, making reading, studying and even concentrating of any kind nearly impossible. The scent itself had once given Gaara a heady feeling, as if the stench leaked in through his orifices and invaded his brain, making it as smoggy and hazed as the room he sat in. The clear white light bulb above him burnt yellow and the smell clung permanently to his clothes, worse then the mildew between the tiles in the bathroom. He probably breathed the equivalent of a pack a day from just living in the same house as that man.

Gaara didn't have a door to his room. The door was actually still there, but only the bottom hinge remained intact and the noise that came from his attempting to close it – not to mention the wrath of the one hearing the noise – wasn't worth the trouble. So Gaara's room didn't have a door, and he'd become accustomed to the smoke, at least as much as was possible.

He could hear the TV blaring in the other room, some male voice going on and on about the weather. The loud sound of his father snoring leaked over the TV and Gaara took a strange comfort in that sound. He preferred it when his father was sleeping, because he couldn't hit in his sleep.

The bruises on his legs were healing over slowly, having changed now from red marks to dark black and blue with a bit of green spotted here and there. He'd had bruises before and he knew about how long these would take to disappear, another week at least. So until that week was over he was resigned to wearing pants and doing his best to avoid behind noticed by the teachers and counselors at his school. The last thing he needed was for them to call home and give his father another reach to pick up that old worn-out belt.

His schoolwork was laid out before him, but he wasn't paying attention to it. It wasn't that the assignments were hard, or really even challenging, there was simply just a lack of motivation for everything. He didn't care about equations or names or even the pages that he was supposed to read for the next day's quiz. All of that wasn't important to him. Instead he was engaging in a forbidden activity, the exact reason why his back was faced to the door and he was listening to the occupant outside so closely.

In his hands, Gaara held a thick book from the school library. It was considered reference and not something that would have been checked out, but he'd managed to sneak it out in his backpack, by using one of the emergency doors in the back where he knew the alarm was broken. Stealing usually wasn't his thing, but at his school all the books one checked out were kept on record, and he didn't want a book on ghosts and the paranormal showing up in a letter in his mailbox.

The only way to survive his father was to give him the least amount of reasons and motivation to be angry.

The book in his hands was currently turned a chapter on precognition and visions of the future. Gaara scanned the pages with a bored expression, passing off each passage as complete and total bullshit. He'd scanned nearly half the book already, and nothing seemed to fit his particular case, nothing ever did. The ghosts and images they described always had some ethereal feeling to them, as if coming directly from the pages of their own religion, and leaving the rest to be passed off as illusion or insanity.

Ghosts and spirits were things dressed in white that floated through walls, wailed and tossed plates across the room. Sure, things like that might exist, but that certainly wasn't the creature that was standing in the corner of his room, next to his bed, watching him with her grotesque smile. She wasn't in the book as a ghost or spirit and she certainly wasn't a demon.

The chapters on precognition also presented the same set of problems. Nearly everything that was reported to this book, and the others Gaara had glanced through before snatching this one, all related it back to religion. A message sent from a God or an angel and there was always a family member or a close friend involved. Not a complete stranger like the boy from the next school. Gaara had known the boy for two days, so that didn't fit.

Gaara closed the book with a soft sigh of frustration and tucked it under the blankets, laying back over it. He frowned and closed his eyes, replaying the image in his mind. He'd lived with the apparition in his room for enough years to not really care about what she was. What concerned him more was the images he'd seen around Haku. That was something he'd never experienced before and it worried him. It wasn't that he overly cared about the feminine looking boy, but rather was thinking more of a long-term sense.

If he saw things like that around Haku, would he start seeing them around others?

"Maybe I am really insane."

Nothing fit. Nothing in the book fit and all the others he'd glanced at seemed to only be repeating the same information split into smaller volumes. None of it was a help and in the end he actually was more in the dark now then he'd been before he'd gotten the notion of actually attempting some half-assed sort of research.

From what he read the precognition image should have had something to do with family. But Haku wasn't family and he really didn't care if it had anything to do with his father. And his mother was dead. So then what else was there?

Gaara rolled over in his bed and closed his eyes, resting his head against the pillow. He heard the soft whispering sound of her moving around the room, still watching him, and passed it off in his mind as unimportant. His head hurt, he was getting a headache from the smoke and trying to concentrate too much on anything. The light above him shone a bit through his eyelids, bathing his inner mind in blood red as he drifted off into a troubled sleep, the smoke invading his mouth and nose.

Sleep usually didn't come that easily in his father's house, but today it seemed to flow right over him like a thick suffocating blanket. The dim lights and sounds faded away into darkness and a silence that was so dense it seemed to scream in his ears. Gaara barely even heard his own soft moan before he was lost in the sensation of falling through the air, with no end in sight.

The atmosphere was cold, the kind of temperature that wasn't necessarily on your skin but rather still made you shiver, because you knew more cold was coming. He could feel the darkness, pushing in around him and yet it was light, the darkness that struck in the dead hours of the morning, just a breath before the sun rose, where there was only silence to be heard. Not even the birds or animals were up this late.

It certainly wasn't a time for a person to be awake.

And yet, in front of him, he could see the blurred image of someone walking down the street, hugging the small pools of the street lamps as he crossed the sidewalk. The image was hazy, as if the smoke had some how followed him into the vision while the image strobed before his eyes, as if he were constantly blinking to focus. He could make out the washed out colors and the shapes in the darkness, but it looked more like an old watercolor painting hidden in the back closet then an actual scene outside. Details were a thing that could only be wished for, they weren't there.

Still, even without the details, he could make out the scene. He recognized the lay out of the trees and the shape of the houses, standing silent in the back. Tucked behind them, like a well-guarded treasure, was the community library that stayed open nearly all hours of the year, doubling for resources for the city and the two schools within the vicinity. The road before him, in the image, seemed to be one of the few leading to that library, which twisted and turned around, leading them to the center of town.

The one in the image was walking slowly, steps careful and watchful. It took time, but eventually the light washed out blue of his clothing became recognizable and he discovered himself to be watching the boy from the afternoon before, a modest pile of books tucked under one arm as he walked home.

Haku had apparently spent the night studying and was now heading home to catch what little sleep he could before school the next day.

A sick and dry feeling crept into his stomach as he watched the image flash before his eyes like an old film reel. Why was he seeing Haku? He'd never had a dream like this before.

Feet crunched over the pavement and a small turn led to a shortcut across a couple lawns, squeezing between two fences that almost met and created more of a tunnel then a passageway. The secret shortcut brought him out to an alley way and a group of boys who seemed to actually be waiting for him.

He couldn't hear the words, but he could tell they were speaking, their washed out images animated in the lack of light. The scene before him resembled more of a shadow puppet show then anything else, but it was no less effective to his mind.

Books crashed on the ground, a backpack dropped and sliding a few feet away. One of the shadows in the darkness was shoved between the boys and he didn't have to think too hard to know that it was Haku. Sounds blurred together and the entire image seemed to spiral down into darkness, the world plunging out from under him as his body suddenly couldn't tell which way was up or down, and all images or feelings to latch onto for balance disappeared.

Visions began flashing in front of his eyes, their intensity blinding him painfully, as if they were physical blows.

Books crashing to the ground, louder this time, the binding on one breaking and popping as it landed open, the slight early morning breeze causing the pages to rustle a bit before settling down.

A punch to the gut, sending the victim leaning over, clutching his stomach and gasping for breath, momentarily forgetting his surroundings to the pain.

A yank of hair, pulling at his scalp and forcing his head back of with a cry of pain.

Tearing filling his ears as clothing is ripped and buttons pop away.

Being pushed back and forth between three bodies, unable to keep footing and unable to regain balance before being shoved to the next, waiting to land hard on the pavement.

Jeers and comments filling the ears, each one painful as the boys laugh, teasing and hurting.

Cries for help, swallowed by the night and their own yells, disappearing and buried so no one could hear them over the other noises.

A moment of freedom, struggling and breaking free to stumble forward in a panicked attempt to escape…

Only to be grabbed and pulled back into the circle, punched again, this time landing hard on the pavement, knocking the wind out of his stomach and stealing away his voice brutally.

Hands gripping at wrists, pinning them to the ground, forcing him to stay painfully on his stomach, his skin pressed to the hard pavement.

More cries and more screams, desperate now in a rough voice. Tears slipping down cheeks accompanied by pleading words and trembling.

Ripping and tearing pain, giving rise to more struggling and harsh pinning in an attempt to limit his movement. It wasn't just his voice screaming anymore but his entire body, desperate, trying anything to get away.

A sharp pain in his side, followed by the warmth of blood and the cold bite of metal.

Cries and voices fade away, rhythmic pain replaced by dullness and a numb feeling flowing over his entire body.

Another cold bite of metal in his shoulder, but this time his body only jerks, trembling but not moving more then that.

Warmth flows over his shoulder and down the side of his body, also from between his legs. A sickening warmth, thick like a creature crawling over his body and slowly slinking away.

The voices around him fade, leaving only the tortured sounds of weak crying from a body unable to move as all feeling just flows away.

The images disappeared, cold freezing their edges and consuming everything in its path. The edges of the dream frosted over, becoming cold and sharp, unforgiving in their shape and angle, threatening a feeling worse then frostbite to any who came near, leaving only one image in his mind, this time with every detail intensified as if it were real, right in front of his face.

Haku looked back at Gaara, his eyes holding a hollow and dead look, his mouth open in an endless scream, crying out simultaneously for helplessness and for hatred. There was no mistaking the boy was dead and would never move again.

But a moment later his dead eyes moved, focusing right on Gaara.

Then the dream shattered around him, accompanied by a soul shattering scream, left to ring in his ears. 


	4. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

The next day Gaara found himself staring impatiently at the classroom clocks, tapping his pencil against the desk. Normally class passed by in a blur, voices and readings blending together as they wandered through his brain and settled somewhere in his subconscious. He never cared about the teachers, doctors or their students, caring even less about their dates, names and math problems. School was a chore, much like cleaning one's room – no matter how often you cleaned your room it would always be dirty again – creating an endless cycle doomed to repeat itself throughout eternity. Gaara could have paid attention in class and maybe even could have aced everything, but in the end he'd still be there. His father would never let him leave, that would mean agreeing he was sane.

Normally days flow, because there was simply nothing to look forward to in the monotony of Gaara's life. However, today, he had a reason he wanted to leave, and the clock hands simply couldn't move fast enough. Something to look forward to wasn't the right phrase, it didn't even come close. Instead, it was the fact that Gaara had a reason for wanting to leave class and make time move faster.

He wanted to check on Haku.

The vivid dream from the night before haunted him, more effectively then she ever had in all his life. He could still, literally, feel the dream creeping over his skin and ringing in his ears. Every moment he closed his eyes, every millisecond in a single blink, he could see the watery visions that had invaded his mind. He could very nearly smell the sweat and blood which had saturated the scene. He didn't want to know if Haku was okay, the image made him need to know. He needed to know if he was just insane.

It was a paradox, a contradiction of one of the worst kinds – damned if he was right and damned if he wasn't.

If Gaara was right, and the vision was real – or even a shade of reality – and Haku was dead, then he'd become the witness to a murder and rape case that would never stand. He's seen it all in his dream. At the very best he could claim the false title of psychic and attempt some false play with drawn out words and perhaps a crystal tucked in his pocket to convince people, or attempt to get them to believe what he'd seen. Worst-case scenario he was sent back home, ready to meet his father's belt because he was 'hallucinating' again.

On the other hand, if Gaara was wrong, he would be immediately pronounced psychotic and whatever parts he tried to explain would be immediately passed off as some homicidal fantasy, lending his father the final excuse he needed to lock Gaara away. Neither option really seemed open to him, and after pondering the points over and over the only thing he could do was make it down to the fence and wait for Haku there.

It wasn't that he was overly panicked or even really concerned for the boy. He cared, obviously – he wasn't twisted enough yet to completely stop caring about other human beings. But on the other hand, if Haku had died like his vision said, he knew he'd still be more worried about the apparent fact that he could now see the future rather then the boy himself. Everything, at the moment, seemed to ride on whether or not Haku was dead, as morbid as it seemed, and Gaara was almost itching with curiosity.

His eyes drifted to the clock on the wall, watching it tick away the moments until freedom. Students around him spoke silently, desperately trying to sneak in conversations behind their teacher's back as she scrawled words on the board that didn't strike any of them as terribly important. Gaara sighed softly in boredom and impatience and finally didn't want to deal with it anymore. He stood up and shoved his books in his bag, then moved for the door and left as if class were over and the bell had rung.

He didn't have to look back to know that the teacher had stopped and was watching him leave. He heard the white board pen stop squeaking and the hushed whispers of the class stop, only to be replaced by more urgent ones whispering about his boldness. Once upon a time he'd taken an odd sense of comfort in the popularity and solitude that such an action brought. However that 'once upon a time' was quickly broken by nights of his father beating him with his favorite leather belt – which he never wore – and worse. School comforts never stayed at school in this type of place and they never stayed comforts for long. Gaara went to school for the same reason most of the other students did. None of them really gave a shit about grades or passing class, rather every moment they were at school they were distracted and not home. That time wasn't something you took lightly, it was a rare gift to the abused and mistreated psycho that it was never given up willingly.

But none of that mattered to Gaara now. What mattered to him, oddly enough, wouldn't happen for another half hour, but his mind was sick of that logic. It wanted to see if the vision had been real and it wanted to see now. There was nothing left to argue and for once not even the painfully vivid memory of his father's belt was enough to dissuade him. He was impatient and he was through waiting in that classroom. School and father be damned, this feeling – perhaps need was even the right word – wouldn't go away.

Feet carried him faster then he'd ever traveled before and he nearly tore through the bushes, his pace reaching a near-out run as he reached the small hill. His foot slipped, the worn treads on his lace up boots proving just how useless they really were for a few seconds before catching a root and allowing him to stumble to his feet and land clutching at the fence to keep his balance. Gaara closed his eyes and leaned against the biting cold metal of the chain link fence and let it press into his cheek, enjoying the cool feeling and letting it calm him down.

With his eyes closed he could hear the space around him. The breeze whispered from the willow tree, speaking in a soft, secretive voice he could never hope to understand. Around him the air tasted of a diluted mint flavoring, with a soft bite of sweetness from the newly cut grass at the other academy sitting beyond the fence. Haku's school could apparently afford to care about the lawn more then a handful of times during the year, and then some. Below those smells was a murmur of something sweet and watery smelling, also tangy, the kind of taste that lingered on the edge of your tongue simultaneously making you scrunch up your face in disgust and ask for more.

And beyond that… there was something else.

The cold of the fence was forgotten as he held his breath, carefully listening. He could feel something else beside himself in the area, cold and waiting, watching. It wasn't her, the one from his room. Her presence was constant but she always felt like a soft weight between his shoulders, like a hand setting on the center of his back, as if to push him forward. This was different. This feeling was a chilling breath, a pressure on either side of his neck, as if someone were ready to strangle him with cold, dead and twisted hands. A breathing pulse of icy chill slipping just below his back hairline.

Gaara pulled back and his eyes snapped open, flickering around the area. The grass was at that height, hinting that tomorrow it would finally grow high enough to wet the edges of his jeans with memories of morning dew, and the trees which created their own natural wall which almost hid the school from sight. His eyes stopped on the willow tree just beyond him and his own breath came in, icy cold.

Beneath the waving branches he could see it, watching quietly. It wasn't her, it wasn't the one from his room and every night of his life, this one was different. Even through the branches he could just barely make it out, and began to take slow steps forward as his eyes focused on it.

He could make out the body, a thin willow-like body surrounded – more then covered – by thin wisps of fabric that acted more like a cousin of the wind then clothing. The skin was pale, with the same lack of color she'd always had, but this was worse because there was a sickly grey tint, making this one look very old. Like her, this one had no legs or feet. The body just continued down and faded away somewhere beneath the knees, as if it were natural for the rest of its legs to be less visible then the air. The face was he last thing he looked at, always the last thing he ever wanted to see – if that was even the right word to use.

The eyes were black, the type of black found in semi-precious gems, still managing to look alive with a nearly intelligent light even though you knew they weren't possibly, not anymore. And it wasn't just the iris that was filled with this color, but the whole eye, not a speck of white in them; just endless black pools able to be completely drown in. The eyes were complimented by a mouth; twisted as if some thing had forced it open as wide as it would go and then, like every mother's threat, it had stayed that way. Black stringy hair completed the image, swaying in a macabre dance around its head that was hypnotizing in its movements.

Gaara stopped a good ten feet from the tree and just stared at the thing before him, his mind unsure what to do next. All he could really do was stare, his mind moving frantically while his limbs seemed to go numb. He'd never seen one like this before, not with eyes like this. The eyes were the part that bothered him the most. Even if he never saw her eyes, he knew they didn't look like that. The deep black pools seemed to almost pull him in, beckoning him to come closer and what stopped him was the look beyond them, the deep red that seemed to be somewhere in the very back of those dark crystals.

The air didn't smell like mint anymore. It smelt like blood.

The thing moved under the willow branches, stepping forward but really more gliding thanks to his lack of feet. The movement was jerky, as if it were limping or in pain. Gaara could see that all the limbs were twisted, broken and bent in unnatural places. The thing moved like a broken puppet with uneven strings, a movement and then a shaky stop, and then another movement that sent tremors through its body. And all the while its eyes were on Gaara, citing him as his target.

Target.

The word rang in Gaara's mind as he heard sounds behind him. For the life of himself he couldn't move, the word pounding in his head and reverberating around his skull. It was so loud the thought was like a physical force, pounding on the closest solid object, anything, to get out. Target rang over and over in his head and the smell of blood choked his throat, but still he couldn't move. The thing in front of him moved, without the need of legs and it was as if it had stolen Gaara's ability of such, leaving him immobile and nearly trembling from just watching.

Then it all snapped away as hands grasped his shoulders. Gaara was jerked back from the tree and caught by two sets of arms, holding him tightly and not giving him a chance to escape. They turned him away from the tree, back toward the group of people who'd finally discovered his hiding place and come to deal the punishment of leaving class and school grounds. It was only when they forced him to turn his back to the tree that whatever spell seemed to break.

Gaara sagged in their arms, panting softly as he suddenly found himself able to breathe again. The air returned to its normal scent, now a stale minty sweetness that stained the throat, but he swallowed it gratefully, anything to forget the blood which had been in the air. He cared more about the clean air in his lungs then their words or the fact that they were forcefully pulling him away from the fence and the willow tree. Two muscled bodies pulled him up the hill and through the bushes and he felt the chilly feeling lift from around his neck, giving him a moment of peace.

But that moment of peace was short lived as a sick feeling settled into his stomach. He'd known this would happen because of his actions, but the reality of the situation hit him when he saw the car waiting in front of the school gates. They'd called his father and now he was being sent home. The black SUV in front of him was the feared car of the school, the very vehicle that took you home when ever the school felt you'd done something that it was better felt your parents should punish you for.

Due to the fact that many of the teenagers at the school had their own shrinks and their own medical and rehab programs, the school itself almost never dealt out punishment. Punishment was dealt out by parents, rather then the school making some attempt to keep everyone's treatment records and restrictions up to date and on file. When you did something larger then send a spitball across the classroom or talk out of turn, you were sent home in the black SUV, to await whatever punishment was part of your 'rehabilitation'. In Gaara's case, he had a sinking feeling he wouldn't be returning to school for the rest of the week.

His legs still hurt from the last beating. Another would send him to bed, probably sick for a week until his father drunk himself into an unconscious stupor and he was able to sneak out of the room to eat again. A look down the hill and a run in with a new local spirit certainly didn't seem worth the week of pain it would cause him, but luckily the thing he'd seen had scared any sort of panic out of his mind.

As bad as it sounded, he would have rather been under his father's belt then at that tree again. In fact, in comparison, the belt actually seemed safer and almost… comforting.

(That Night)

A crack snapped through the air and Gaara gritted his teeth, his eyes shut tightly from the pain that shot through his body. His legs throbbed, well close to the point of being deathly numb, and his back ached from the new red scratches. He was bleeding and he could feel the hot red liquid spreading out over his body as the sharp and cold metal bit into his back.

It wasn't just the leather belt today. Instead his father had decided to be even more sinister and use the end with the latch and hook, the metal proving to be much more painful then the leather would ever be. It also didn't help that he'd made Gaara completely strip down and hit at his legs until he couldn't stand anymore and crumbled to the floor, before moving to his back.

The belt hit again and Gaara leaned his head against the wall in his bedroom, trying to take a small bit of comfort from the cold concrete that met his face. He struggled to keep his mouth shut and not cry out, his brain tuning out his father's hateful words as the beating continued.

He didn't hear the words, he never heard the words. Once upon a time, when the beatings like this had started, he remembered screaming back at his father, trying to protest and trying to beg him to stop. Such reactions only seemed to egg him on and those nights had lasted forever, imprinting his mind and filling his future with painful dreams where all he could hear was himself screaming. He's learned quickly to keep his mouth shut and not say a word, waiting for his father to grow bored with the unresponsive body his son became when he was beaten now. The most that came from his actions now were bleeding and the occasional reflexive jerk, but otherwise Gaara had trained himself to completely shut down during the beatings. A lack of screaming and reacting bored him and sooner then other times he grew tired and retreated to drink on the chair in front of the TV.

Gaara winced as the belt buckle bit into his back, near his neck and he felt the skin break. He bit his lower lip and closed his eyes, forcing himself to breathe quickly and block out the pain. The concrete wasn't cold anymore, now it was warm and slippery with his own sweat. He waited for the next hit to come, but it never did. Instead he heard the familiar, and wonderful, sound of his father rolling the belt up and stopping.

He didn't move and he even dared to hold his breath. His ears filled with his own heartbeat, counting the seconds and waiting for his reaction. No reaction came, and there was no retaliation to his slight change. Instead he heard the footsteps of his father leaving the room. Painfully he forced himself to stay still until he heard the springs on the chair move and his father sit down, the sound of glass scratching on the table as he picked up his bottle for another drink.

Only then did Gaara let the stress flow out of his body and he crumbled completely to the ground. His body screamed in pain and he couldn't hold in a small whimper that escaped as he curled into a ball and took quick but quiet breathes. His head felt light and the room seemed to spin around him, the pain covering him like a spiked blanket.

He couldn't move now, his shock completely taking over. His body shook, trembling from its held back reactions that now shattered through him. His vision filled with black dots and he coughed in his effort to breathe, a spasm shaking his chest.

It was a strange feeling at first and he almost didn't notice it as he fought his own body's need to drift into unconsciousness. He couldn't fall asleep, he refused to, because he didn't trust his father to not come in for a second round when the television bored him. The feeling was very small, like the brushing of slightly cold air, the kind that was just cold enough to make the hair on your arm stand taunt, but not give you goose bumps. It was just a brush, but he noticed it from below the pain and his mind seemed to quiet at it.

Gaara tilted his head up and turn it, looking behind him despite the odd and almost painful angle, to see. He found her standing there, above him, the wispy edges of her legless image brushing against his torn and red skin. She wasn't touching him and really wasn't reacting to him more then usual, but she was floating there, looking down at him.

From this angle he could see her eyes, buried beneath the overgrown tuffs of bangs that were groomed over the top half of her face. They were a white, a pearl white, making the rest of her skin and dress look dirty and a far touch from any type of bleach. Her eyes actually shown to an eerie extent, sightless and yet seeing completely in the same glance, and giving the idea that there was a whole world behind them, simply waiting to be gazed upon. The look almost made one think that there were two holes in her head, leading to a light bulb shinning brightly behind her and showing light through.

"I'm not insane. I saw him, mom." Gaara whispered softly, not able to speak any louder because he was still recovering.

The apparition above him simply watched him and didn't react more then letting her image jerk in and out of focus. But he didn't expect an answer from her as he twisted back to lay down normally on the floor.

He finally let his eyes drift shut and sleep envelope him in a comforting numbness. Behind him, somewhere in the other room, the words from the TV seemed just a bit louder reporting a murder.

A boy had been raped and killed, left in the street to die.

Somewhere in Gaara's subconscious, he knew it was Haku. 


	5. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Sunlight blurred his vision as eyes blinked, taking in the blank yellowing wall in front of him. He focused on the wall, picking out the small cracks from repainting without bothering to scrape and small spots where the level was uneven and there were small air bubbles in the dried paint. The floor was cold under his body, slowly sucking the warmth away as it had been doing all night. The sunlight was an unwelcome neighbor, painful in its brightness and downright sadistic in the cheer and promise that was supposed to accompany it and a new day. Empty promises that continued to reshow their ugly faces to taunt him each and every morning.

His body ached, still moaning in pain that filled his mind and his ears, causing him to be momentarily deaf and unable to think. The fog of pain was choking and it was all Gaara could do to force himself to turn his head and slowly sit up. As he moved he could feel the cuts on his back and the dried blood flaking off. To say he hurt was an understatement. Sadly, he could say he'd had worse.

The house around him was quiet, not giving a single sound. Somewhere in the course of the night his father had apparently decided to go to work and was now gone, even taking the time to turn off the TV in his normal routine. This meant Gaara had the day to himself to do what he wanted, at least until his father decided to come home. It was almost a sense of balance, like the world was actually trying to apologize. Any time he was beaten bad enough to go unconscious he was usually treated to a day in the house alone, but it wasn't worth it to him. He would have rather been at school.

The walk to the bathroom seemed to take an eternity and Gaara just barely managed to limp there and sit down in the tub. He lay against the chilling cold tub and let it fill with warm water, just staring up at the ceiling.

He could hear the words of the news report from the other room the night before echo in his mind. A boy had been discovered in the street, raped and killed by a stabbing. Haku was dead. The muffled voice of the news announcer had repeated the words with a hint of appropriate sorrow over and over in his mind, hammering the fact slowly and permanently into his brain. His dream had been real.

Gaara suddenly felt sick, and seeing his own blood soak off his body and turn the water around him pink wasn't helping. Crawling out of the tub he managed to make it to the toilet, only to lean over it for the next hour while his body tried to throw up food he hadn't eaten. He felt sick. The sick feeling that started in the back of your brain, just in the back corner, and continued to grow so much that it affected your stomach and throat. It was the need to throw up every speck of food in his body, or attempt to, until he was completely empty. His entire world was spinning again, just like it had been after the beating, but faster now, spiraling into darkness. Gaara curled up on the floor and hugged himself tightly as he found his body shaking again to the effect of almost seeming to have a seizure. He coughed dryly, the feeling scratching his throat raw. He felt the need to throw up again but couldn't move enough to try and act on it. Black filled his vision again and the world dropped out beneath him into silence.

A couple hours must have passed before he awoke again. This time it was the sound of dripping water that awoke him, the pings ringing through his brain as it reverberated through the pink filled tub. Gaara couldn't stop the moan that escaped his throat as he sat up and looked around the room. He froze for a moment, waiting for the sick feeling to return, but it never came. Instead it seemed to now be replaced with a numb and empty feeling, as if he'd tried everything and the life had just been sucked out of him because of it.

Silently Gaara pulled himself to his feet and unplugged the tub, watching the now cold pink water swirl down the drain loudly. He stood there, transfixed by the motion, until the water was gone, then he set about cleaning up the rest of the bathroom and the small pinkish ring that now surrounded the tub.

His mind slowly began to work, processing things at a more palatable rate now that he'd had his moment of complete and total breakdown. He remember the sick feeling well enough that he was able to chalk it up to a momentary complete and total panic about having to deal with yet another unwelcome factor in his life. He'd had his moment of breakdown, and now he was well into the stage of acceptance and adaptation.

The sheer idea of having yet another thing to deal with in his life was not attractive in the least, in fact the mere thought boardered on making him sick again. A life at an academy that wouldn't get him anywhere but an annoyance of an escape was the least of his worries, followed by dealing with the society around him that put his sad excuse for a free life in jeopardy the moment he left the system. Then there was his father, and little more needed to be said about that. And the spirits he saw at the least convenient times. And now this? These dreams?

It was too much to handle at once.

Prophetic dreams weren't supposed to exist. It was a plot device to send movies along, to make people wonder and to cop out of explanations in fantasy novels. They weren't real. And even the ones he had heard about from various sources weren't like the one he'd had. They were supposed to be visions, images of things to come. Prophetic dreams were not supposed to be out of body experiences where he watched a boy he barely knew get thrown back and forth, raped and killed as if he were some sick bystander who'd stopped to enjoy the show. He shouldn't have seen that happen and he certainly shouldn't have seen it when it happened, at the same moment – which was about the right time as far as he could figure.

Things like this didn't happen, weren't supposed to, but apparently the world had just decided that Gaara had gotten too used to his current hellish situation and had decided to throw in another piece. Gaara made a point of deciding that if he ever met the person in charge of throwing this horrid excuse of a life together for him he'd tear them to pieces with his bare hands.

That said and decided, he finally left the bathroom and moved to his closet in an attempt to find clothes. Gaara had discovered early on that fish net, in spite of its strange look and general un-acceptance by the masses outside of 'gothic' teenage style, was actually the ideal type of shirt when your back was a patchwork of cuts and scrapes. The fabric barely touched one's skin and usually was light enough to not even be felt, and it kept other fabric from irritating the cuts as they attempted to heal. As a result his wardrobe served a double purpose. It hid the cuts, and it did so in the most comfortable way he could without drawing attention to himself and inviting more such treatment.

The fish net went on automatically first, followed by baggy black jeans that allowed the cuts on his legs to get as much air as possible and hopefully heal faster. A thin black over shirt hid the cuts that were visible through the fishnet and Gaara looked like his normal self, which he confirmed by glaring in the mirror. He allowed himself a moment of complete hate and disgust, directing the look at himself but aiming it more at his current situation – if you could really glare at a situation and an inanimate thing – then he wandered to the kitchen in search of some sort of food.

His father, in spite of his horrible attempt at being that – actually wasn't bad at much else. Like any other single guy with no real interest to have a social life, he went to work and then came home and watched television, electing to wander to his bed at some point during the night and repeat the process again. Food was kept in the kitchen, and it was all relatively simple. Gaara had money for clothes and other things when he could manage to steal it from his father's room or whenever there was some comment made by a social worker that he should have something a little newer. Other then those simple things, his father really didn't care. They lived in a smaller house which could have been about the size of an apartment, but was left over from the days when his mother had been alive. So simple things like finding food and attempting to look normal for those who become just a little too nosey were easy enough. No one bothered them in this house. And as much of a hell as it was, it was a familiar hell and therefore one that Gaara was able to deal with.

It was the unfamiliar hells that caused the problems.

The kitchen didn't yield much this time, and Gaara settled for a bottle of water and a half finished bag of salt crackers to fill his stomach. He munched on one of the crackers slowly, making sure it didn't upset his stomach again, then set about cleaning off the chair next to the kitchen table so he had a place to sit down and attempt to relax.

In the process of tossing a pair of his father's dirty jeans, which had seen the floor more times then they'd seen the washer, he heard a click out in the living room. Gaara immediately froze from years of trained reactions and went completely still. That familiar sound was the distinct click of the TV turning on and he could hear the sound of electricity humming from the old appliance still hanging on the edge of life from constant use for almost eighteen years. He hadn't tripped over the remote.

Was his father home?

Gaara winced at the thought of his father finding him in the kitchen and losing his temper again just because Gaara had basically presented himself as a target. He didn't like to be found outside of his room, it usually lead to more beatings then he could deal with. On instinct his panicked mind started plotting ways to get back to his bedroom uncaught.

But his father was at work.

That thought implanted itself in Gaara's mind and he slowly straightened up. His father may be abusive, but he didn't skip work. So he had to be gone. But then how had the television turned on? He distinctly remembered it being off when he'd passed it a moment ago. Unable to contain his curiosity and wonder at the situation, Gaara abandoned his pathetic excuse for a meal and stepped out of the kitchen to look around the living room for the culprit.

The living room wasn't that exciting of a place and generally looked like the rest of the house in its general disorder. The required decent sized TV was situated against the wall, with a worn and well used easy reclining chair sitting in front of it that had long ago lost its ability to recline and now just slouched much like the person who usually filled it. A small table which was probably an antique sat next to the chair, overflowing with empty and half full cans and bottles and a few crumpled bags of snack food. No one bothered to clean so the junk seemed to be breeding on its own, slowly moving to take over the entire room until some form of motivation over swept his father to clean.

The television was on, the sound turned down low and nothing else strange about it. Gaara could even see the remote sitting on the reclining chair; no one had touched it.

But his mind concentrated more on the scene on the television as he stepped forward, following the urge to turn up the volume and listen in. The channel was turned to a random news show, showing the scene of a murder with bodies being pulled away on stretchers in black bags. Gaara's feet moved him slowly toward the television until the screen flashed, showing the faces of four boys. Then it turned to another picture, of Haku.

Gaara stumbled forward quickly and hit the sound up, holding the button until it was blaring loudly through the room as he stared.

"…found just days ago murdered. No concrete connections have been made between the boys yet, but all of their bodies were found killed and positioned in a similar way. It has not been confirmed if the three recently found were raped as well. Police are still investigating the scene…"

The reporter's voice faded out as Gaara flipped through the channels, trying desperately to find another news report on the events that wasn't just wrapping up and switching to more appetizing things. But the television seemed to be malfunctioning, because every time he thought he found a channel and let go of the button, it would suddenly flip back to the original channel it had been on.

Gaara stepped back as he watched the weather man move across the screen pointing out the weather for the next three days. Three feet from the TV, four… five… nowhere near the remote….

The channel flipped again and it was almost as if something had pressed rewind. Gaara watched in mute awe as the camera man showed a shaking image of the house surrounded by yellow police tape in the middle of a perfectly normal suburban neighborhood. Neighbors stood not too far away, watching as four bodies were wheeled from the house wrapped in black bags, followed by another medical worker carrying another bag holding what could have possibly been spare parts.

The same scene played over and over again. It showed the bodies and showed their faces in perfect looking school photographs, and then showed the photo of Haku which looked too posed to actually be real. As soon as that photo was flashed across the screen the picture would blur, like a tape rewinding itself, only to repeat again.

Gaara turned away from the television and took a few deep breaths to calm himself.

She was standing in the kitchen doorway, her head tilted as she looked at the television picture.

Gaara blinked. "Did you…?"

She of course didn't answer, she never did. But her body moved, slinking slowly back into the kitchen and out of sight as if she'd never been there. As she moved the sound on the television began to turn up again and Gaara could hear the news report, the volume slowly turning higher and higher.

"Shut up!" He turned to the television angrily. The last thing he wanted to see was the face of that dead boy flashed on the screen over and over again as if something were accusing him of the death. It wasn't his fault he wasn't there. Hell he barely even knew the boy, so why in the world was all of this going on? He had nothing to do with it. Haku was like any other student at his school who'd just suddenly decided to talk to him out of the blue. He wasn't important.  
"You're dead!"

Gaara turned toward the television and opened his mouth to repeat those words but his voice caught in his throat and the room grew ice cold.

Staring back at him, from behind the television, emerging from the wall as if it were a part of it, was the thing he'd seen yesterday.

Hair tangled down around his head, looking wet and almost alive in its strange fluid movements. He could see the eyes and they stared right back at him, the mouth twisted open painfully in an eternal scream of pain. It slowly slunk out of the wall, pulling away like a drop of water slowly falling from a turned off faucet, escaping. Shoulders became visible and arms slid out of the wall as it moved through the television and slowly advanced on Gaara.

"You're dead." Gaara's voice shook as he just stared at the thing advancing on him. The words were small, trembling on their own as he watched. He couldn't move and he could barely breathe. It was as if those eyes were black holes, slowly sucking in everything around him. The warmth was gone from the room, as was any sound that Gaara could make out, and now those deep black pits were pulling away his voice and the air. Gaara himself felt that if he stayed there too long he'd fall in, caught in a world of darkness and falling forever.

Sound disappeared around him, the television fizzing to silence and a loud static sound filling his ears. It was the same sound she always made, but louder, almost violent in its volume. The sound felt like sandpaper, rubbing over his ears painfully and it grew louder and louder around him.

Then the mouth moved and a scream shattered the air, forcing Gaara to move and cover his ears. The thing in front of him moved in a flash, suddenly appearing right in front of him and Gaara felt a stabbing cold hit him in the chest as if the thing held a knife.

Panic took over. He stumbled backward, landing against the wall and sending an old dusty picture shattering to the floor. The sound of the glass cracking and wood snapping seemed to shatter across the room and shake his surroundings, but Gaara didn't care. As soon as he could get back to his feet he was bolting, slamming his shoulder into the doorframe in his hurry to get out of the room.

He stumbled out into the sun light outside and for a moment was completely blinded. The sun stunned his eyes and he stumbled across the grass, tumbling to the ground for a mere second, before he was up and running again, bolting from the house. He didn't care how stupid he looked or if anyone else even noticed him. All he cared about was getting away from that thing.

He just ran and never looked back.


	6. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

The sun was setting long before the thought even crossed Gaara's mind to turn around and try heading home. By that time, with the sunlight waning, he found himself far past the school and into the outskirts of town where suburban houses tapered off into larger, older structures that had not quite enough land to be called farms, but too much land to be considered part of the city. He'd stopped running a long time ago and had simply dropped into wandering in any direction away from his house, not really paying attention beyond what was needed to make sure he didn't wander out in front of a car, or into the side of a building.

His head hurt from everything running through his mind, and yet he'd reached a moment of what could almost be called mental numbness. He didn't know what to do and he certainly didn't know how to react to the whole situation, so he didn't react. Instead he let it fester, hoping that in the repeated action of seeing the scene in his mind, he'd find some sort of solution, or even a logical thought.

He knew what he had seen. He hadn't touched the television and yet it had acted on his own. Gaara wasn't sure if she'd done it, or if that thing which had come out of the wall had, but he had a feeling it was her. He couldn't quite place it, but it seemed more likely that it was her, since she had appeared first. Either way, no matter what caused it, the message was crystal clear.

Haku was dead. And so were the boys he'd seen from the vision. It didn't take a leap to notice that those were most likely, without a doubt, the blurred faced he'd seen in the dream of what had happened. That added together didn't create a very friendly picture or thought. The ghosts he'd read about didn't do that. He knew that the ones in storybooks really only ended up being about as threatening as the children under sheets who pretended to be them during Halloween.

Sure, some of them got violent, but that was mostly to scare up money in movie tickets where fans had gotten sick of just seeing white specters and wanted more blood and gore. Ghosts didn't massacre people. Humans did that.

He'd given up trying to figure out how much his life had changed in the last couple of days, it just wasn't even worth the effort it would have required. All he knew was that now he had to deal with this new thing following him around. Granted it wasn't exactly following him the way she did, but if there was one thing he'd learned about these things it was that if you saw them once, you'd see them again. Ghosts, specters, spirits, whatever they were supposed to be called, were never a single phenomenon for him. They repeated, usually quite often, and many never went away.

The problem was that most of them developed a distinct pattern or at least stuck to one place. He'd seen others before, at random times, but they always stayed attached to that place and it was more like seeing someone waiting in a window each time you passed, they didn't follow him. This one, the one that was apparently Haku, did. He didn't like how this pattern was proceeding and he wasn't fool enough to think it wouldn't continue.

Haku had shown up in his dream. He remembered seeing the boy's face at the end. And then he'd been down by the willow trees and the fence, making that a second time. Then a third in his own house. Luckily he hadn't shown up for the rest of the day and had given Gaara time to think.

Gaara stopped walking and glanced out over the wide yard of grass in front of him. Across about an acre of land was an old house, standing in defiance to the time and weather, some how managing to stay there in spite of all the odds and forces pushing it down. But it wasn't the house that interested him, rather the graveyard that stood a few feet away.

The graveyard housed, for lack of a better word, the majority of those who had passed in the city. A couple families, with the money to be so picky, had their relatives buried elsewhere, but the majority now resided in the large headstone spotted plot of land, which the owners of the farm-like house took care of. Gaara really couldn't care less about the other residents in the city, dead or alive, but he knew the graveyard pretty well.

It was where she was buried.

As a child, when things had gotten so bad that he'd actually been spurred to run away for a small period of time, he'd always gone to the graveyard. He could remember nights of falling asleep, curled against her headstone with her looking on in her strange wispy form. It was a place for comfort, which was rare.

In his rush to leave the house and get away from that thing which had come through the wall, Gaara had fallen back into old habits and wandered here, once again. This place was honestly a last resort for him. So, in a way, it just went to prove how much the entire situation disturbed him.

Gaara stopped walking and peered past the gate, his eyes finding her stone in amongst the neatly tended rows and random droppings of flowers. For a moment he actually considered staying there for the night, but his mind soon changed, as he realized that was really the stupidest thing he could do with the mood his father was in. In all likelihood the older man had forgotten about the beating and probably didn't even care anymore. Gaara even doubted if he'd noticed that his son was gone. Still, risking being discovered as missing wasn't something he wanted to risk if he could avoid it, especially not while the wounds on his back were still healing. As comforting as it would have been to fall asleep next to the cold stone, it wasn't worth the risk.

Frowning to himself, Gaara turned and started on the most direct route home.

This walk took little to no time, since he knew the route by heart. Skipping through alleys and ducking under fences to cross empty backyards, Gaara reached his house in almost record time without running or even really quickening his step. The sun was just below the horizon, the darkness covering the world around him with its thick and peaceful blanket. The moonlight shone over everything… Especially the police cars at his front door.

Gaara froze in the neighbor's yard, staring at his own front door through the flashing red and blue lights. Several police cars dotted the road and he could see policemen moving back and forth, a couple unrolling the bright yellow tape, while a reporter lingered on the sidelines taking pictures. Gaara just stood there staring, not really believing what he was seeing.

Then his feet seemed to move on their own and suddenly he was racing across the lawn, ducking under the tape and moving through the front door. He vaguely heard the yells from the policemen, but really didn't care. He just ran into the house, and landed smack against a large uniformed man's arms, catching him before he tripped right into the crime scene. Gaara's ears filled with fuzz from pure shock and he couldn't hear what was being said to him. All he could do was stare at the sight in the room and go completely still.

The living room didn't look like his living room anymore. Nothing had really changed about the room; all the furniture was in the same places and all the decorations hanging and dusty on the walls. But there was an added layer coloring the dull dark carpet, wet and black. Blood surrounded the remains of his father, scattered across the floor, looking like a doll that had shattered to pieces. All his limbs were still attached, but they were twisted in ways that the human body had never been meant to bend in. Thankfully his face was turned in the other direction, but the scene was gruesome enough.

Gaara's knees gave out and he crumbled to the ground, the cop holding him following him down to keep him mostly upright. Gaara didn't care. He didn't even feel the arms around him any more.

All he could do was stare at his father's body.

And pray that he didn't turn out like his mother.


	7. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

The police station wasn't any different then any other police station you would see in the movies, or read about in books. Old scratched up wooden desks were lined up in the room, covered with papers and leaking pens and the occasional cheap computer to keep track of better records then the overflowing file cabinets in the back of the room. Lights hung above, old and yellowed from the constant work and sweat in the room, along with old desk lamps twisted every which direction to illuminate backlogs of work. Inside of the police station, uniforms weren't a requirement and everyone seemed to be dressed in a mishmash of old white suit shirts and fading khaki pants.

The cop in front of Gaara was no exception. He leaned back in his chair, a second away from kicking his feet up on the desk, as he scanned over the folder in his hands. The folder easily had Gaara's personal information in it and, no doubt, his record. The cop was scanning it for what had to be the hundredth time, obviously trying to figure out how to deal with the 'troubled' youth in front of him, who had just seen his father's dead body.

A second later he set down the folder and leaned forward, resting his chin on his hands as he looked at Gaara. "All right, so here's the deal… Gaara. We're going to need you to stay here for the night."

Gaara just watched him quietly. "Because you think I did it."

"Did you?" The cop asked, he seemed to simply be humoring him. His eyes had that bored and glazed look that one always gained after being at his job for far too many years. And he had the type of hair that spiked up, whether one liked it or not, either that or he had a severe hatred for combs. He looked like the stereotypical old school cop from any movie one might find on television.

"No." Gaara said simply. "He hated me. I didn't hate him."

The cop seemed to consider that for a bit. Gaara didn't respond to anything more then his questions, just watching him quietly. This was one of those people you never really could read, because he simply had nothing to read about him. The hardest thing to understand in a person's mood was boredom, because it left no clues whatsoever to grab. And that's what this cop was, he looked eternally bored.

"I'll tell you the truth kid, you're on our list, but that's not the real reason we need you to stay." He hesitated and looked back down at the folder. "We can't let you go back home, since it's now a crime scene and frankly-"

"None of the local homes will take me. I'll sleep in a cell for the night. I don't care." That wasn't exactly the truth. In reality, when Gaara considered it, he preferred the cell. Bars were something he'd seen more then once in his life and he considered them almost a form of protection rather then a form of imprisonment. Bars would have meant his father couldn't touch him, among other things. At the moment, with the current situation, being locked in a small cell in the back of the police station seemed much safer then being shipped off to some random foster home or orphanage with an extra bed that really didn't care too much about him. This wasn't the situation where he wanted to be surrounded by people who would think he was completely crazy. At least the police were required to take better care of him then some random person off the street, and he didn't need to explain himself to them or deal with random sympathy attempts.

"Well I suppose it's settled then."

Gaara remained silent for a while, not saying anything. He watched the cop move around a few more papers and sign something that looked semi important, then he stood up.

"He died the same way as Haku."

The cop stopped and looked back at him, raising an eyebrow. "The boy on the news?"

"It's the same. Right?"

There was hesitation, then he nodded. "I suppose you've been watching the news on that. Did you know him?"

Gaara nodded. He generally hated conversations with random people he didn't know, but needed to know more about what had happened to Haku and the others. Haku had come back. If Haku had come back, there was a possibility his father might.

The cop stood there, watching him for a second, then sat back down and grabbed a free legal pad and pen. "The last time you saw him?"

"Three days ago, at lunch. He was eating his lunch down by the fence that separates the two schoolyards. I met him the day before that, for the first time." "Anything else important you can tell me?"

Gaara shook his head. It didn't even occur to him to tell about the dream he'd had or the visions he'd seen. He knew the cop had his file right in front of him on his desk, and he would simply chalk up the strange images to whatever conclusion everyone else had written down on those neat little sheets of paper. He'd never seen his file himself, but he had a pretty good idea what was in it.

Finally the cop seemed to have everything written down and he tucked the legal pad under his arm with the two files, then motioned for Gaara to follow him. "It'll only be for a night. Tomorrow I'll go with you and help you pick up some things from your house, then we'll look into finding you a more permanent and comfortable place to stay until things are straightened out." His voice trailed off as they passed all the desks to a door in the back of the room. The large lock undone, Gaara was led down a hallway with several rooms with very thick doors and bars over the in the sides. Perfectly old cells, complaining of heavy sturdiness and a need to be replaced, but only when everything else had been paid for with the limited funds the station received. Obviously they still worked or they would have been replaced a long time ago. Either that, or no one had proven their inability to work yet.

The cop turned the key in the closest empty room, holding the door open for him. "There's a fresh pillow and blanket and stuff on the bed. I will have to lock the door, but we'll have guards patrolling to check on you." He paused and frowned a bit. "You're sure you're fine with this? I can find a boarding house."

Gaara shook his head. "It's a bed for the night. You said it's not permanent. I can deal with temporary." He stepped past him and moved over to the bed, sitting down on it and looking out the window which faced the city capital. There was a moment of uncomfortable silence, before the man closed the door and the lock made a large clanking sound, signaling it was locked.

"See you in the morning."

Hours passed by slow enough and Gaara soon lost track of time, just watching out the window in silence. He watched the cars rush by during the last moments of rush hour and then taper off as the sun began to set on the other side of the building, casting purple lines across his view. Light faded and the capital building was lit up, showing off its sleeping splendor for all who managed to really care at this late of an hour. People wandered by occasionally, hurrying off to whatever they were busy with. Soon the roads and sidewalks emptied, leaving the only thing of interest to look at being the skies above and the stars which were trying their best to be visible in spite of the city lights.

The police station around him grew silent. Occasionally he could hear people talking in muffled voices past the doors and every now and then a guard wandered down his hallway, looking into each of the cells. Aside from that, the cells were quite peaceful and Gaara relaxed, just enjoying the silence. The silence was comforting in its mindlessness and he savored every moment of it.

The light above him flickered, asking silently for a new bulb, and Gaara's eyes drifted from the window to the shadow across the small room. Like clockwork, there she stood, watching him silently. An ironic smile attempted to appear on his face and succeeded, just barely.

Gaara watched her back for a moment, then closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the wall, relaxing more as he hugged his knees. He wasn't tired and didn't feel like sleeping, instead he just tried to clear his mind of everything that happened. He didn't want to think about any of this anymore. For one night, at least, he wanted the silence and nothing else. He'd worry about the whole situation tomorrow.

Apparently, though, other beings had other ideas. A cold breeze danced across his cheek and slithered around, raising the hairs on the back of his neck. Gaara didn't open his eyes and just drew in a soft breath, only to cough loudly and have his eyes snap open as the sudden change in temperature made his throat squeeze shut in surprise. He opened his eyes and rubbed his throat, looking around the room.

She hadn't moved, but her image was jerking back and forth much quicker then usual, as if showing that she was nervous, or even scared. The movement reminded him of a scared child who'd decided to stand up, when all they really wanted to do was huddle in a corner and tremble in fear. Gaara frowned and moved to stand up, his eyes wandering toward the door.

He froze.

Staring back at him, through the bars in the small window, was the same thing he'd seen before. The dark black eyes lit up even more, seeming deeper thanks to the moonlight which shone almost directly on them. In the limited space he could see the tangled black hair swirling around the things head and the twisted mouth as it peered inside. Gaara shakily stood up and backed away from the door, his back hitting the wall behind him as the thing slowly phased through the door and into the room.

Static screamed in his ears as the thing floated more into view, stepping through the door as if it were open to stand by itself in the room. Gaara covered his eyes to try and stop the high-pitched noise that clouded his thoughts but that didn't make a difference. All he could do was stare and hold his ears tightly as the thing slowly began to move toward him.

"You're dead." The words slipped from his mouth as he winced and tried to back up more, in spite of the wall behind him. He had to move, he didn't want to stand there, but he was trapped on all sides. There wasn't a way out of the room this time and the world seemed to rapidly be closing in on him with each step the thing took. In mere seconds it was right in front of him and Gaara couldn't breathe. It was all he could do to stay standing there and covering his ears as his body desperately tried not to panic and failed.

It was in front of him. Right in front of him, barely a breath away, and each breath he took drew in stale and dead air, causing his throat to close up and his lungs to cry out in pain. Dead sound replaced the static and he couldn't hear a thing, momentarily deaf from the sheer fear that flowed through his mind as he stared back into those eyes. He was vaguely aware of his own lips moving, but no sound seemed to come out, just a feeble attempt that went unvoiced.

A twisted and knarred hand reached forward, each of the fingers protruding at odd angles as if they'd been broken from grabbing at things and being forcibly pulled away. The hand reached and touched his chest and then the scream ripped from his throat, hoarsely sounding unfamiliar as it echoed in the small room.

The cell disappeared and the scream rang in his head, making him more unsure if it were his own or Haku's that pounded between his ears. Flashes covered his vision, blinking the cell around him into nothingness from sheer pain and force.  
Blurred faces leaning over him.

Pain coursing through his body.

Broken limbs.

Screams covered from laughs and jeers.

Cold metal biting into his side, turning everything red.

Gaara crumbled to the ground, curling up on his side as he gasped, trying to breathe air that just simply wasn't there. No matter how wide he opened his mouth there was nothing, just nothing at all and his body shook from the pain and stress.

He could barely make out the thing standing in front of him, watching dispassionately as he struggled on the floor. His mind dropped into a primitive panic and he started scratching at the floor and his throat, as if that would bring more air into his vicinity and stop the pain.

Numbly, in the back of his mind, he heard a soft sound, sweet in its tone. The panic faded, ever so slightly, and Gaara looked up in surprise. Now it wasn't the only thing in front of him. Now she stood there as well, for the first time in all his life facing away from him.

She stood between them. Protecting him.

Then the two touched.

Darkness shot through the room and shadows covered everything, light snapping out of existence. The dark was a physical force, ripping through Gaara, tearing away any movement he had left in his body. Silence surrounded him with complete darkness and there was nothing.

(Later)

Light faded back into being slowly and a soft moan escaped Gaara's throat. His eyes slid open and looked around the room, the blurred colors slowly melting into shapes he could focus on, despite the pounding in the back of his head. Slowly the old gray wall in front of him faded into view, cracks lacing the concrete bricks from age and wear. A couple places carried pockets of crumbling debris and just out of his sight was a scratching of what might have once been chalk, but wasn't completely readable now.

He could feel the cold floor beneath his body and the air around him was stale, dead. Opening his mouth he chanced taking a slow breath, only to be greeted with a stabbing pain in his chest. Gaara coughed hard enough for his body to shudder a few times, then managed to push himself up to sit.

He was in the cell. Alone.

Sunlight crept into the small room, sneaking in through the small window and slowly illuminating everything he could see around him. The bed behind him lay untouched along with the blanket and pillow which had been laid out. Nothing else in the room had been disturbed and the only thing around him that even hinted at what he'd witnessed was the small black burn on the floor in front of him.

Gaara leaned forward and touched the darkened concrete, sliding his hand over it. The area actually felt a bit warm and the burn was almost invisible, if not for the fact that he'd known that's right where both of them had been standing. He traced his fingers over the marks until he was sure he wasn't hallucinating, then sat back against the wall, looking around the silent room.

"… mother?"

It was dawn and the light was too bright for her to appear, but for one of the few times in his life he wanted her to. He needed her to. Standing up from the ground he grabbed the pillow and pulled the bed over, climbing up on it to reach the window. He ignored the pain in his chest as he stuffed the pillow into the window and tucked the blanket around it to shut out as much light as he could. Immediately the room dropped into darkness and he turned around, looking in each of the darker corners.

"Mother?"

He almost never called her that, but she always seemed to appear around him when he was alone and there was darkness. He knew who she was, even if he didn't know why she always followed him. So it would make sense that she would appear in the darkness if he called, still he'd never tried it before.

Gaara stepped down off the bed to the floor and over to the burn, his eyes flickering from shadow to shadow. "Mother? Mother?"

Silence greeted him, no one answering back, and deep in his stomach an empty feeling began to grow. She wasn't answering.

She wasn't going to answer.

She was gone.

Gaara turned, biting his lower lip as he stepped into one of the shadowed corners. Closing his eyes and concentrating, he screamed in his mind, calling out her name. He waited for something, anything. Any type of sign that could show he wasn't alone. But there was nothing. No roaring static in his ears, no cold feeling over his skin, no soft whispers in the air, nothing.

Just nothing.

Gaara shivered and stumbled back over to the burn on the floor, just staring at it.

She was gone.

She'd disappeared.

He'd spent the majority of his life wishing she weren't there, wishing she wouldn't haunt him like she did, but now to be faced with the actual fact that he might have gotten his childhood wish terrified him. She had completely disappeared the moment she'd touched the other one, both of them had. Both of them had left him alone.

He'd never realized how much comfort he'd taken from the fact that he could see things like that in his life, day in and day out.

The burn on the floor seemed to mock him, just barely visible. It was nearly gone, taunting him with silent promises of possibly disappearing, just like the other two had. He couldn't tear his eyes away from the small burn and yet he didn't want to look anymore, as his mind seemed to drop farther and farther into panic.

He was completely alone.

A small sound caught his attention as a drop of red landed on the burn, splattering in an uneven circle just at the edge. Another followed it, dying the floor just a bit more.

Gaara looked down and his eyes widened as he realized the chest of his shirt held a large dark and wet stain. He was bleeding… like he'd been stabbed.

Right where the blade had landed when it killed Haku.


	8. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Author's Note: Here is where the plot changes begin. Just to let everyone know…

The woman worked silently, slowly circling Gaara as he sat up on the small table, his arms raised and letting her wrap around the gauze. A thick patch of cloth, resembling an almost comical sized band-aid was resting over his chest, working to stop the blood. He heard her stop as she looked over the cuts on his back, uttering a small gasp. Apparently the marks from his father's belt were much more visible then he thought and a lot worse.

Gaara frowned and lowered his arms, trying to catch her attention and get her to stop staring. He hated it when people stared at him with pity in their eyes.

"You've got quite a few nasty cuts."

Gaara looked up to see the cop standing in front of him, leaning against the doorframe. He looked almost exactly the same as the day before, and Gaara would have even considered the thought that he'd stayed the night, were it not for the fact that his shirt was now a slightly different color and not quite as wrinkled as it had been yesterday. This had to be one of those men who had a closet full of the same shirts, which only became different through time and wear and the occasional spaghetti dinner that decided not to stay on the plate.

Gaara shrugged. He felt the lady fasten off the bandage and pull her hands back, and he took that as a signal that she was done. Ignoring her he jumped off the table and grabbed his fishnet shirt, pulling it on with the other black over shirt. There was now a large stain from the blood on both sides, but it was clothes and it was all he had. His only other option was the white t-shirt that was two sizes too big that she was pulling out of a drawer. Funny, but she seemed almost offended that Gaara didn't accept it. She should have known better.

"Found you a home to stay in, until things get ironed out. And I took the liberty of stopping at your house and getting a plastic bag full of clothes for you from your closet. Was there anything else of importance you needed?"

Gaara shook his head. "Nothing important." He walked toward the door, not completely looking at the cop.

He actually wanted to go to the home. He needed to be around people right now, anything to lessen the thick lonely feeling which was festering in his stomach. She was gone. He couldn't get over that fact and part of him was just waiting for the sun to set again that night so he could run outside and call her name, waiting for her to appear… Even if she never would.

Gaara shivered slightly.

"Cold?" The cop asked, following him out to the car.

Gaara shook his head. He waited for the older man to unlock the doors then slid into the passenger side seat and looked out the window, waiting for him to drive. His eyes wandered to the police station, constantly scanning the shadows in the area, even if he knew by now she wouldn't appear. She was gone and the only thing left of her…

"It's her birthday." He said softly, still watching out the window. But his eyes weren't on the shadows now, instead they were watching the cop's reflection in his window.

"Who's?" He asked.

"My mother. I always visit her on her birthday."

The cop frowned, his eyes concentrating carefully on the road. Even in the blurred reflection Gaara could see the small amount of stress that crossed his forehead. The car actually seemed to slow a bit and he seemed to be driving just a bit slower down the streets. "You want to visit her."

Gaara nodded. He'd lucked out. He could tell this cop had had at least one important person in his life die, if not more then that. The speed of the car and the look on his face was easily an indication of that. As heartless as it sounded, it only helped the situation.

"She's at the local graveyard. It isn't far."

The cop frowned a bit more. "And then we take you to the home to stay there."

Gaara nodded again. "I won't be long."

They drove slower for a moment as the cop seemed to consider his position. Then the car turned and sped up to normal speed and Gaara watched as the scenery outside changed to familiar fields which lined the outskirts of town. He resisted the urge to smile at how easily the cop had agreed and turned his attention to the new current situation: what he would do when he got there.

The graveyard was very simple, boasting only a small handful of large and expensive stones. The majority of the graves were marked with simple engraved marble stones, with a name and a date and the occasional quote. There weren't large angels or statues, but the effect was still there, even in daylight. The sky seemed just that much darker as clouds moved teasingly close to covering the sun. Shadows were cast over the graves in fancy leaf shapes, making them seem alive, like stony gargoyles waiting to go back to flying and playing as soon as Gaara turned his back.

Gaara slid out of the car and stepped through the gate, heading toward his mother's grave. The cop stayed behind, stopping at the gate to just lean against the iron and give him his privacy, which he was thankful for. It was easier to think when someone wasn't hovering around you, trying to figure you out or at least understand what was going on in your head.

The grass was wet with hints of morning dew, and Gaara followed the path by memory, picking out his way to her grave and careful not to step on the others. When he reached hers he came to a stop and just stood there, looking down.

Her grave stone was uniform and not too remarkable at all. Somewhere along the line someone had decided it wasn't worth the money to add on a little motto or quote on the bottom that usually said 'loving other' or something to that affect. So her gravestone sat alone, with simply a name and a date, hardly seeming to mark the body beneath which hadn't been seen for almost twenty years.

And now that Gaara was here, looking at her stone, the lonely feeling in his mind only seemed to multiply. 

What had he expected? Her to be sitting here waiting for him? He certainly hadn't expected her to come out of the grave like some cheap apparition and return to following him again, had he? So what good was it doing to sit here at her grave staring down at the stone? What good would it do? What could he do about anything now?

Life hit him smack hard in the stomach and Gaara crumbled to his knees, catching himself on the edge of her grave. Everything was gone. Everything he'd grown up with, no matter how horrible or torturous it was, was now gone. And proving the current pattern in his life such things didn't disappear so much as they were ripped away violently and shredded to bits. Now everything he knew was gone.

He wouldn't be returning home, not now that his father was dead and the house and belongings had probably been seized by the state in an attempt to help pay for his own future care. His mother, what little of a spirit had been left of her, was now burned out of existence leaving a cold stone behind in an empty yard. He had no doubt he'd never see his school again, thanks to being moved to a new city. And even his small amount of belongings were left to some police lab to try and solve a murder that could never be solved with worldly means.

He had nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Gaara closed his eyes and winced as the deep cut in his chest from the night before ached. He was breathing too hard and the would decided to tell him that in a painfully sharp yell through his brain. Gaara, for his credit, did the only thing he'd ever learned to do best in his life.In his mind he grabbed the pain, latching onto it, and focused it, using it to focus his mind toward a goal. He had to think of something. His time was limited, but he had to think of something to do.

Moments before he'd welcomed the idea of a boarding house and being surrounded by new faces and expressions. Any other time in his life the looks oif pity and possible fear would have annoyed him, but only second ago he'd been willing to accept them with open arms, if only it would help him forget. But he realized now, as he crouched next to her grave, that nothing would ever help him forget this. No matter what happened in the future he knew his nights would be filled with the memory of her disappearing, of Haku's murder and of his father's belt, all bent of torturing him until there was nothing left of his mind and he ended up as some nameless entity sitting in the back of a padded cell, no longer able to even touch the real world around him.

Gaara latched onto the pain to calm his mind and force his thoughts into a coherent path. He needed to think, he needed to do something… and he knew that home wasn't an option. This wasn't going to go away. This wasn't simply a case of a dead man's body found on the floor with just his son left behind in the state's care. There was more going on here and Gaara knew that no one could ever help him with it because none of them had seen what he had and none of them would ever understand. The home wasn't an option. He'd never let himself be completely beaten down before and going to the home would only be just that. He had no doubt that Haku's tortured form would follow him and would never give him a moment's peace. He couldn't run away.

There was only one option when one couldn't run away.

Gaara stood up and his eyes crossed the graveyard. He ignored the cop who was still leaning against the fence, and instead found himself looking for something else. He knew it would appear, it always did. And she'd always appeared near the willow trees so maybe…

The breeze around him stepped up, gaining a small chill and he waited as the familiar signs filled in around him. He didn't have to wait long, just staring at the shadows beneath the swaying vine-like branches. He blinked and then the shape was there, the pooled black eyes looking almost white from the sunlight's reflection. Gaara watched it for a moment, then did something that he'd never ever in his life expected to do.

He walked toward it. 


	9. Chapter 8

Chapter 8 He'd spent his entire life turning his back to them, or doing his best to ignore them. The only one he could ever remember interacting with was his mother, and even then it only managed to pass along the lines of acknowledging her existence. It wasn't like the stories or the movies. They didn't usually hunt down people and tell secrets of treasures buried under fireplaces or murders committed in the darkness to look like suicide and nothing beyond that. They never actually even spoke in his experience, instead they were always just there like macabre watchers taking note of everything that happened in the world that passed them by and left them forgotten.

Gaara, in his life, hadn't known anyone else who could see them, so they were just his own little secret, his own special talent… which created more stress at first but then gained no more attention then a blink of an eye.

Haku's was different. 

Haku was the first one who ever showed more of a… consciousness, for lack of a better word. Or perhaps it was just that Gaara seemed to be tied more closely to this one then any other. This spirit actually seemed to be following him, because with the exception of the boys who'd committed the murder, it was always Gaara that Haku's actions circled around. Why?

Why?

Gaara asked that question as he stepped forward, toward the spirit. For the first time he didn't look away, he didn't turn and he didn't run. Instead he just walked with slow and steady steps toward the tree and the wavering figure before him with its mouth twisted to a gruesome angle and size. Even with all the horrible and creepy deformities, it was still Haku, that much he could tell. This was just what people looked like after a death such as his, and ignoring him because of his looks made Gaara just as bad as the people who shunned him for his 'gothic' style of clothing.

The thing in front of him didn't move. It stood there, as much as one can without feet or the bottom half of their legs, and wavered just slightly out of air, his image jittery as if he didn't quite know which dimension he existed in. But it was still Haku, and it watched him with the dark inky eyes, showing no other reactions.

Gaara reached his hand forward and took a deep breath, then he touched him.

The graveyard dropped out around him and Gaara's eyes slid shut, the cut in his side flaring to life in a hot and sheering pain, so powerful that it would have blinded him if his eyes had been open, or so it felt. He could feel the knife there and he could hear his body screaming in pain from it, aching from the torture he'd felt the night…

…he'd been killed.

Moisture slid down his cheeks and he could feel the tears rolling, the only cool reprieve from everything else he was feeling. The concrete under him was cold and hard and the voices had hurt his ears along with his own screams to the point that he only heard fizzing silence now. So he just laid there and cried as the pain flowed over him and he felt the concrete grow warm from his blood. All he could do was cry.

Somewhere in the pain, his mind started playing tricks on him. As if his mind had some secretary whose job was now to file away all his thoughts and memories to be stored at death, he began to see images played before his closed eyes, blurring together with barely audible and mumbled words, expressions and emotions.

Parents always expecting more of him then he could give.

Never being good enough.

Being sent to that rich school as a last resort… and hating every moment.

Being teased for his looks, his hair, his body.

Running away.

Always running.

Seeing the boy by the fence.

Feeling a kinship to him, no matter how different they were.

Trying to speak to him.

Making a friend, finally, for once who didn't care about money or his looks or anything and in his own way seemed to accept him silently for what he was.

That was what it had been, an act of desperation. For the outcast at the school of perfect students, who would better understand then the outcast of the outcasts? It almost seemed set that his rich school, the one he'd dreaded all his life, was situated right next to the detention center for troubled children, or whatever odd politically correct name they tried to camouflage it under. In reality it was the school where all the freaks from society went to, the place where he felt like he should be.

Well, his parents would have thrown a fit if he'd even asked them to consider such a thing, so instead he contented himself to watching down by the fence, dreaming of the school that was out of his reach, where he might actually fit in. After all, if you didn't fit in with the normal kids or the overly talented who else was left? He had to fit in somewhere, so it had to be there, because everywhere else closed their doors and left him out in the cold.

Even this boy closed the doors at first, ignoring him and trying to push him away with a cold shoulder and a hard tone. He wasn't friendly, but then he hadn't expected it to be easy. He knew no one would ever accept him right away, how could they? It would take work, and he was more then willing to try this one last time. This one last time he would do anything to be accepted. 

Anything. 

So he sat down and tried speaking with him and took the boy's silence as a kind of acceptance and maybe even a welcome. It had to be… he had found someone, hadn't he?

The first day had felt like everyone else, being turned away and ignored like every other time. He'd met it with a smile, secretly knowing that he wasn't going to give up, not when this was his last chance. He just quietly ate his lunch and tried not to disturb the boy. Maybe if he was silent he'd be accepted too, and he'd do that if that's what it took. Still, on the first day, it didn't seem to work.

The second day was the one that convinced him. Another cold shoulder and another cold tone and that seemed to be it, the final rejection and not even worth another try. He'd left, doing his best to hide the sheer disappointment and rejection he'd felt welling up inside. It wasn't worth a third try was it? Everyone had always told him that tries go in threes, but this many rejections and he was way past three, there really seemed no point in trying anymore. He turned and started back to his own classrooms, the fact of this last rejection just looming over him.

"Haku."

Had he heard that right? Had he heard his name? He turned and looked back at the boy, battling everything in his body to keep from showing just how much hope seemed to spark at that single moment. 

"Be careful."

And that was where everything ended.

He didn't want to remember what happened the night after that, didn't want to see that again. The pain still flowed through his body and didn't seem to leave at all. And even after that point, after the pain had completely filled him to the point of overflowing, all he could think about were those words. "Be careful." 

No one had ever cared that much.

No one would ever care that much ever again.

He couldn't lose that… not after this had taken so long… why did he have to lose it now? Why couldn't he just keep it… just this once…

Please?

"Yes." Gaara responded softly.

(later)

The cop looked down at his watch and let out a sigh. An hour had passed and it was time to go. While he could understand the boy's need to see his mother on her birthday – which he actually doubted was the real reason, but whatever – an hour was certainly enough time to do whatever mourning was required. Placing a bookmark in his book he tucked it safely back under the car seat and shut the door, heading out into the graveyard with his hands in his pockets and his normal bored expression.

It took him a moment to locate the boy, for he wasn't standing near his mother's grave anymore. Instead he found Gaara kneeling under a willow tree, almost completely hidden from sight next to a newly made grave with a headstone that shown from being freshly created and placed. The cop stepped over to him and moved to lightly touch his shoulder but stopped, the scene freezing in his mind. There was something about this that wasn't right.

No one could deny that when you'd been a cop as long as Kakashi had been, that you picked up what some might call a sixth sense about things in your field. In truth it happened with every job, so it really wasn't that strange. Days, months and years of repeated actions helped you pick out patterns that would pass the normal eye and soon it just became habit to notice such things where others would not. An empty grave yard and a boy kneeling near a fresh grave not moving? As eerie as it sounded, it almost seemed to be out of a horror movie, but Kakashi wasn't thinking about that. Instead he was thinking about Gaara… the one not moving.

He didn't know the boy and he didn't know much about him, but he knew his type. Gaara was guarded and any attempt to touch him should have been met with a dodge or a glare. That was just a normal response for someone who had been beaten as much as him.

But there was nothing.

Kakashi touched Gaara's shoulder and his suspicions were only confirmed when there was still no movement, and his hand met with flesh as cold as ice.

Kakashi slowly stood up and moved around the scene, so he could see Gaara's face, intent on getting one last look before he radioed for help. He wasn't looking to determine the cause of death, that wasn't his job. Instead he was looking for anything clue as to what had happened at all. And what he saw was probably the strangest thing he would ever see in his entire career.

On Gaara's face was a small smile. It wasn't immediately noticeable, but it was the kind that you knew was sincere, because it never stayed long and on those who'd been hurt as much as he had, it was especially rare and could only be drawn out by a moment of sincereness.

The other thing was Gaara's hand. His hand was actually buried in the earth of the fresh grave, as if he'd slid it straight into the ground and were now holding something tightly… holding someone's hand…

And the name on the grave…

…was Haku.

The end. 


End file.
